Impossible Ceramic Sculpture Blows My Mind! | Pottery Studio Tour

Bowls are usually on tables and I have this sense that anything that's on a table is kind of for the body. It's supportive of our material sort of world. If it's on the wall or like on a shelf it's kind of for the mind a little bit. Well hello I'm Clark Underwood and welcome to The Quest for Zest. Today I'm out here in East Austin riding the old scooter headed to see Evan Horn, an incredible sculptor. I can't wait to see his workspace, how he works, and learn more about his journey as an artist. But first I've got to get there and I will see you there. All right here we go. Evan what's up? Hey what's up Clark? Good to see you. Good to see you too. Thank you. I'm looking behind you and this space is lovely. Yeah come on in. Yeah check it out. So tell me where we at. Is this your home, your studio, your workspace all in one? Yeah I live here and I have a greenhouse studio in the back and so I produce the work there and I have the main space here kind of set up like a gallery. I have studio visits and yeah so keep it pretty much set up. I have been so excited to see your work in person so I might have to be rude and be like hey give me a minute you know because I've been studying him. Yeah there you go. And feel free to touch anything you want barely just like this. Okay I'm good with that. I was reading about your work and you said that some of this is made out of like Texas River, not mud, clay. Texas River clay. Yeah yeah. I started harvesting my own clay during quarantine really because a lot of the stores were closed and I was just out there on my hikes and as you're looking down and around you realize wait clay is kind of how rivers work so and creeks as well so I was harvesting clay from creek beds. The contrast between your sculptures and your tableware, how do you balance that in your artistry? It's really nice to balance that because this the sculpture work is abstract, intuitive, spontaneous. I work in this flow state. The functional tableware like this is routine. It's automatic. I have a kind of goal in mind and I just set out to achieve that goal so really straightforward you know but there are different ways of working and I appreciate that. It's nice to kind of move between different modes you know. So the sculpture work starts out as a blob and it kind of remains a blob for a long time as I'm sort of curating the shapes and forms that I want from it and becomes by degrees more articulate and kind of defines like this. The method is called slab construction. So it starts slab with a b? With a b. Okay. I start out with blob and I roll the blob into a slab and then I really cut shapes out and start assembling. So this is very much like an assemblage. You fold it together? No I don't fold them. I attach them. Okay. Yeah so it's these sort of you know these larger suggestive and kind of gestural pieces that then fit together in this sort of. Gotcha so on a piece like this would you be like okay this thing's going to be four-legged and you kind of make four legs and expand from there? Yeah. Yeah I do start with the base. Okay. I have to construct something that is going to work out from the ground up or in this case table or shelf up. So I start out with a secure base. It's usually a four legs or three. This has a pyramidal kind of triangular base you see here which is always structurally really integral and but I let them take their own shape. I like to work spontaneously you know. So I have an idea in mind and then I see kind of how that develops. If I like what I'm doing I keep going. If there are aspects I don't like I edit that and then keep working. So it's very much this sort of like echo chamber that I'm in in the studio where it's I'm working, I'm responding to the work, I'm working more and it's that kind of response with myself. So it sounds like at the beginning there's like a plan and then it just gets festive. I just lose the plan. Yes that's so great. All of your your free-flowing ones stay like soccer ball. Yeah. Is that a limitation of kiln or is that a size that you enjoy working? Yeah. Or what keeps it or is that what people buy? I mean there's practical reasons. It's true that of course like for artists the tendency and desire is to always work bigger and bigger. There are some limitations with ceramics of course. This type of work would be really hard to do on a large scale because now it's super secure and stable no problem but as greenware it's very fragile. So working on a large scale could be problematic. So I hear you talking about all the balancing and making sure it works and it doesn't fall apart right and I'm thinking this is stone like what's the big deal? But while you're building it it's totally can fall in on itself. That's the dance really and that's kind of why it looks like that. It's a whole circus trying to keep this thing up. I'm literally having to like a foot on the table and I'm doing this sort of thing. I'm securing it with my whole body. It's this scale because it's right here I'm working with it. It's very much an extension of my body and so it's manageable right. The other thing of course is that I want it to be accessible to people in stores and galleries and wherever it's being exhibited so this is a reasonable size to work with. How did you lead yourself from like function to sculpture and I can tell like that's the trajectory. Yeah it's a good question. Bowls are usually on tables and I have this sense that anything that's on a table is kind of for the body. It's like it's supportive of our material sort of world. If it's on the wall or like on a shelf it's kind of for the mind a little bit. If it's a sculpture it's kind of for the mind. It's less about the body so we don't have these ready-made perceptions of what the value of mental objects are and art objects but for the body, for functionality, there's a real sense of how much something should cost. Yeah well that's a really interesting mental separation of like put it on a table and it's for service. Yeah. Put it on a shelf and it's for you know contemplation. Exactly. That's really cool. Yeah. Really cool. That's a line I've never thought. I have just kind of started thinking about that but it seems to make sense. It does. Well it has been a joy getting to hear about your process and like the discovery of how you got to these shapes. Now I want to see where it happens. Yeah. Can I check out the studio? Definitely. Let's do it. Oh man this rules. It's like an extension of your living room. Yeah. Except you can be messy. Cool deal. So right here is where you're doing the sculptures and the housewares. I've been producing everything in here lately you know. I can get up in the morning, come straight to work. I can be in my pajamas if I want to. There are no barriers and my energy is good in the morning. It's inspiring. The space feels open, inviting, keeps the energy high. I'm in here. I'm watering the plants. I got my Spotify going. I'm burning my incense. I have my water and you know I can come in here even do yoga right here while I'm working. I will sometimes be working the clay like this in a warrior position and just have it stacking my life. That's too cool. So how important is like that process like availability to like double dip so to speak. Like you can dip into your work, dip out of your work or simultaneously be doing those things. Yeah I love that my whole world is sort of integrated in this way so that work, play, living, it all kind of happens in this seamless way. So at no point in the day is there this like hard stop and I have to now embark on this new sort of activity. It just sort of seamlessly flows so I like that. It can get a little confusing sometimes when you're too inundated in your own world and myth. So yeah I have to definitely step out quite a bit but when I'm here I love being here and it's an inspiring space and I feel like the work extends kind of naturally from this environment. Well I've gotten to see your space. I've gotten to see your work. I've gotten to see your process and some of that gave me some history but a lot of that was current. Like what's emerging, what you're discovering. Give me some history. What was your lead up? Did you do any art school? Did you like as a kid do you have art influence? Like how did you land here? Yeah so I guess I've always been interested in creating things. I took pottery for the first time in high school and took it in college but then didn't anticipate ever becoming a potter or a ceramicist or making this my life. I tried like many other things before this and usually always in a creative capacity but it has now just become this thing where I get to apply kind of creative measures to every step of the process. Yeah I studied branding and advertising, creative writing. I'm still really new to this. I've only been producing sculpture like this for the last three to four years and I've only really been working as a full-time ceramicist for like less than five years. So yeah I'm discovering a lot of this as I go. You know there's no like roadmap necessarily. I think that you have to manage to work through those unknowns. Like you're going to be surrounded by uncertainty and you have to manage somehow to keep your energy and inspiration high. So surround yourself by things that you love, people that you care about, beautiful things. Hopefully invite some nature into your life, into your routine you know. So yeah staying interested, keeping the energy high, that's like that's it. Well I've had a killer time being at your house, seeing your plants, seeing you work, getting a real good look at your sculptures that I've been admiring from afar. So just super appreciate it and thanks for the day. What an inspiring and insightful time spent with Evan Horn. It was such a pleasure to see how he got to sculpting, see him sculpting, hear about his table wares, and just pulling his clay from the earth here in Texas. It's all super cool. Until the next time on The Quest for Zest, I'll be seeing y'all. I'm Clark Gunderman. Ciao.